Following a contentious session that ended in Samoa on Saturday, the 56-nation Commonwealth declared that Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, the foreign minister of Ghana, would be the organization’s new secretary general.
The former British colonies make up the majority of the voluntary association of independent states.
Three contenders, including Botchwey, supported calls for Britain to confront the heritage of slavery and colonialism.
She was a politician before becoming foreign minister seven years ago, most notably during Ghana’s two-year term on the UN Security Council, which ended in December 2023.
She has backed the drafting of a free trade agreement among Commonwealth member states and has previously said she stands for reparations.
“Financial reparations is good,” she said at an event in London earlier this year.
A Commonwealth Secretary General can serve a maximum of two terms of four years each. The incumbent is Dominican Baroness Patricia Scotland.
By convention, the secretary general role is rotated around the body’s four geographical blocs: the Pacific, Asia, Europe, and Africa. It was now Africa’s turn.
“Truly humbled by the overwhelming support of the Commonwealth Heads of Government in selecting me as the incoming Secretary-General of the Commonwealth” she posted on social media.
“The work indeed lies ahead!”
The Commonwealth promotes democratic governance, cooperation in trade, education, climate advocacy and the transparency of financial systems.
It is headed by King Charles III, but the secretary general is responsible for running the London-based secretariat.
Botchwey was appointed during a summit in Samoa that was supposed to be about climate change but instead got caught up in a heated discussion about reparations.
Many countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific want Britain and other European powers to at least make political atonement or provide monetary compensation for slavery.
They urge politicians in the UK to pledge to have a conversation on reparatory justice, which may entail making monetary contributions.
However, Britain’s financially beleaguered government has made a concerted effort to steer clear of the discussion.
The Bahamas’ Prime Minister Philip Davis told AFP that a real discussion about the past was vital.
“The time has come to have a real dialogue about how we address these historical wrongs,” he said.
“Reparatory justice is not an easy conversation, but it’s an important one.”
“The horrors of slavery left a deep, generational wound in our communities, and the fight for justice and reparatory justice is far from over”.
Experts estimate that over four centuries about 10-15 million slaves were taken from Africa to the Americas.
The true figure, and human toll may never be known. The practice finally ended around 1870.
The British royal family, which benefited from the slave trade over centuries, has faced calls to apologise.
King Charles monarch stopped well short of that on Friday, asking summit delegates to “reject the language of division”.
“I understand, from listening to people across the Commonwealth, how the most painful aspects of our past continue to resonate,” he said.
“None of us can change the past. But we can commit, with all our hearts, to learning its lessons and to finding creative ways to right inequalities that endure.”
